Disaster recovery services are nothing new, but VMware vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery is. The company just rolled out a new -based disaster recovery service for VMware virtualized data centers.

According to the company, VMware vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery is easy to set up and self-manage and comes at a fraction of the cost of traditional data recovery solutions. Is it just hype or is this something VMware customers will rush to?

"VMware continues to distinguish itself from other cloud providers by making disaster recovery simple and cost-effective, allowing our customers to use a hybrid cloud approach to deliver business value, without wrestling with operational complexity and incompatibility inherent to other public clouds,” said Bill Fathers, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Hybrid Cloud Services Business Unit.

Overcoming DR Challenges

VMware is boldly claiming a new approach. Every IT admin knows business continuity is critical. Nevertheless, the company reports, only a small percentage of apps are continuously protected because data recovery solutions can be expensive and complicated.

Actually, expensive and complicated may be an understatement. For many businesses data recovery involves maintaining exact duplicates of data center hardware configurations. That more than doubles the cost. What’s more the challenges of maintaining the same configuration means disaster recovery tests are often difficult, highly manual, and infrequently performed. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery promises to help businesses overcome all of those issues.

We turned to Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, to get his take on the new service. He told us he likes what he sees.

“Disaster recovery is something companies struggle with no matter how large they are. I always kind of joke that most companies are experts at backing up information -- they are just not really good at recovering it,” Kerravala said. “It requires a dedicated team that goes through meticulous testing all the time to do data recovery well.”

Why Wouldn’t You Buy It?

VMware is positioning the vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery as a replication and hosting service that’s ideal for businesses with limited or no disaster recovery solutions or customers that want to exchange traditional set ups for cloud-based solutions. The new disaster recovery product promises secure asynchronous replication and failover for vSphere virtual environments.

“This is a complementary service for the vCloud services the company has today,” Kerravala said. “I’m not sure why existing vCloud customers wouldn’t buy this. I think VMware should wrap it into some sort of services bundle.”